The Nabob eBook

“Below, madame, in his carriage. It was
he who sent me to look for you.”

She ran before the attendant, walking quickly, talking
aloud, pushing aside out of her way the little black
and bearded men who were gesticulating in the passages.
After the waiting-hall she crossed a great round antechamber
where servants in respectful rows made a living wainscotting
to the high, blank wall. From there she could
see through the glass doors, the outside railing,
the crowd in waiting, and among the other vehicles,
the Nabob’s carriage waiting. As she passed,
the peasant recognised in one of the groups her enormous
neighbour of the gallery, with the pale man in spectacles
who had attacked her son, who was receiving all sorts
of felicitation for his discourse. At the name
of Jansoulet, pronounced among mocking and satisfied
sneers, she stopped.

“At any rate,” said a handsome man with
a bad feminine face, “he has not proved where
our accusations were false.”

The old woman, hearing that, wrenched herself through
the crowd, and facing Moessard said:

“What he did not say I will. I am his mother,
and it is my duty to speak.”

She stopped to seize Le Merquier by the sleeve, who
was escaping:

“Wicked man, you must listen, first of all.
What have you got against my child? Don’t
you know who he is? Wait a little till I tell
you.”

And turning to the journalist:

“I had two sons, sir.”

Moessard was no longer there. She returned to
Le Merquier: “Two sons, sir.”
Le Merquier had disappeared.

“Oh, listen to me, some one, I beg,” said
the poor mother, throwing her hands and her voice
round her to assemble and retain her hearers; but
all fled, melted away, disappeared—­deputies,
reporters, unknown and mocking faces to whom she wished
at any cost to tell her story, careless of the indifference
where her sorrows and her joys fell, her pride and
maternal tenderness expressed in a tornado of feeling.
And while she was thus exciting herself and struggling—­distracted,
her bonnet awry—­at once grotesque and sublime,
as are all the children of nature when brought into
civilization, taking to witness the honesty of her
son and the injustice of men, even the liveried servants,
whose disdainful impassibility was more cruel than
all, Jansoulet appeared suddenly beside her.

“Take my arm, mother. You must not stop
there.”

He said it in a tone so firm and calm that all the
laughter ceased, and the old woman, suddenly quieted,
sustained by this solid hold, still trembling a little
with anger, left the palace between two respectful
rows. A dignified and rustic couple, the millions
of the son gilding the countrified air of the mother,
like the rags of a saint enshrined in a golden chasse—­they
disappeared in the bright sunlight outside, in the
splendour of their glittering carriage—­a
ferocious irony in their deep distress, a striking
symbol of the terrible misery of the rich.